Looking for natural ways to color your Easter eggs this year? You can dye Easter eggs naturally with vegetables, fruits, and spices you have in your home!
Easter is a special time of year in my home. We spend time with our closest friends and family members and enjoy the warm spring weather outdoors.
What I don’t particularly love about easter is the access of sugary treats and neon easter eggs. This year we are reducing the easter treats our kids to consume and instead of dying our eggs with fluorescent dyes, we’re naturally dying them with foods and spices we have in our kitchen.
I spent a few weeks testing different produce, spices, and even tea and through trial and error found which foods produced the most vibrant colors. My children joined in on the experiment and helped me decorate our eggs with foliage from the yard. Dyeing eggs naturally was a much longer process than tradition dying, but we enjoyed the time together!
How To Dye Easter Eggs Naturally
You can create beautiful earth-toned easter eggs with a variety of fruits, vegetables, and spices. Red cabbage created the loveliest blue colored eggs, beets turned our eggs red-purple color, turmeric made our eggs bright yellow, yellow onion skins made gorgeous caramel-brown eggs, and hibiscus tea left the eggs a dark charcoal-purple color. We also tested matcha, spirulina powder, chamomile tea, and paprika. I wasn’t impressed with the colors of these dyes. The matcha left the eggs a very light green color, the paprika made them a light brown-red color, chamomile left them a light yellow and the spirulina powder didn’t change the color at all.
To prepare natural food dye you’ll need to start with 1 cup of chopped fruit or veggie or 1 tablespoon of spice and boil it in 2 cups of water. The longer you boil the richer the color! Strain the dye through a fine-mesh strainer and into jars or containers. Next, you’ll want to add 1 teaspoon of vinegar to the color. This step is important because vinegar helps the colors to absorb into the shell, making the eggs more vibrant in color.
Decorating Eggs
To decorate eggs, we used grass, dandelions, and flowers found in our yard. We dipped the flowers in water and placed them on the egg. The water helped them to stay in place. Then we used old pantyhose, cut up into pieces, to secure the flower on the egg while dying.
This was by far the most time we’ve spent decorating Easter eggs, and it was the funniest too!
PrintHow To Dye Easter Eggs Naturally
- Yield: 1 3/4 Cup Dye 1x
Ingredients
- 1 Cup Chopped Red Cabbage, Chopped Beets, Onion Skins, 1 Tablespoon Turmeric or 1 Cup Strong Brewed Hibiscus Tea
- 2 Cups Water
- 1 Teaspoon Vinegar
- Boiled Eggs
Instructions
- Bring 2 cups of water to a boil.
- Add chopped veggies, fruits or spices to the pot.
- Reduce the heat to medium and let the water simmer for 15-20 minutes.
- Take the pot off the heat and let it cool.
- Strain the material with a fine mesh strainer and pour the dye water into containers or jars.
- Add 1 teaspoon of vinegar to the dye water.
- Carefully put the boiled eggs into the jar of dye and secure with a lid.
- Place the jar in the refrigerator and let the eggs dye for 6 – 12 hours, the longer the better.
- Remove the eggs from the jar and place them on a towel lined cookie sheet to dry.
- Allow them to dry completely before removing the decorations (this will reduce the amount of scuffs and marks on the eggs).
Notes
- Colors vary depending on how long you allow the eggs to soak in the dye.
- Fresh fruits and veggies produce richer color than prepackaged or canned veggies.
This article was originally published on April 6, 2019, and was updated and republished on March 15, 2020.
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Just did this and put the eggs in the fridge. Can’t wait to see how they turn out. Will they be edible?